7: I Have Heard Of Your Paintings Well Enough

The Louvre was as silent as a mausoleum. Romana and Duggan made their way by
torchlight as quietly as they could through the building. In every chamber and
every room they were presented with the same picture - security staff
unconscious, innocent expressions on their faces.

‘I thought the Louvre was meant to be well-guarded,’ whispered Romana.

‘It looks as though every alarm in the place has been immobilised,’
Duggan observed. ‘A fantastic feat.’

‘Nerve gas?’ Romana frowned. ‘No, that would take far more
men than we've seen in the Count's employ to deploy. The authorities would have
been alerted in moments. And we'd hardly be wandering through here unaffected,
would we?’

‘So what do you suppose he's done?’

‘Some sort of sonic pulse, I suppose. With equipment like that
bracelet, they could easily knock out everyone in the building with minimal
effort.’

As they entered the section that housed the Mona Lisa, the torch beam fell
on the huddled form of a security guard lying face down in front of them.
Duggan quickly examined the man, and saw the fatal bullet wound. ‘Another
alarm's been immobilised,’ Duggan quipped.

Sure enough, the section of wall where the famous painting had been
displayed was now empty. The protective glass screen was propped up against the
wall nearby, and the red light beams still shone down across the space, but
there was no painting behind them.

‘That system should be absolutely impregnable!’ exclaimed Duggan
in disbelief. ‘It can't be turned off!’

‘Someone's managed it somehow,’ replied Romana sourly.

Duggan went up to the wall. ‘The only way to get at the painting is
through...’ In his demonstration Duggan waved his hand through one of the
beams. Romana sank her face into her hands as alarms sprang to life throughout
the vast building. You could have heard them miles away.

‘Hells bells!’ yelled Duggan over the din.

‘That's what it sounds like!’ Romana agreed. ‘Let's get
out of here!’

‘Split up,’ Duggan advised as they ran up the nearest staircase
until they were at ground level. ‘We'll meet back at the café.’

Romana glanced around the darkened room. ‘How do you suggest we get
out?’ she enquired.

Duggan pointed. ‘See that window?’

‘Yes?’

In reply Duggan charged, and took a flying leap. A further cacophony of
alarms began screaming as he catapulted through the window, a shower of glass
following him. Romana sighed, and hurriedly made her way towards the
recently-formed escape exit route. In the distance she could hear approaching
police sirens...

Professor Theodore Nicholai Kerensky awoke with a throbbing headache.
Uneasily, he got to his feet and looked around for the tall, curly-haired man
who seemed to understand temporal theory better than himself, but the
laboratory was empty. He staggered over to the cell, hoping to find the
stranger in there, but it had been also been vacated.

The hole smashed in the brick wall however aroused his curiosity, and he
climbed through into the small inner chamber. The first thing he saw was a painting.

‘Mona Lisa!’ he gasped in sheer astonishment.

Then he saw the other five paintings. He shook himself to make sure he was
not still asleep.

‘Mona Lisas!’ he corrected himself.

He was startled by a groan, and knelt down to find, to his additional
astonishment, the unconscious form of Count Scarlioni. The Count was muttering
something, and Kerensky leaned close to pick up the faint words.

‘Doctor,’ said Scarlioni, ‘would you care to explain to me
exactly how you come to be in both Paris, 1979...’

‘...and Florence, 1505?’ finished the man who called himself
Captain Tancredi.

The Doctor was seated in a chair at a table in Leonardo's studio. The
soldier stood at the door, and Captain Tancredi loomed over the Time Lord with
a venomous glare in his eyes. ‘I'm waiting, Doctor.’

‘Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘I do get about a bit, you know.’

Tancredi raised an eyebrow. ‘Through time?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘How, exactly?’

The Doctor seemed to recall having been in this very situation but a few
hours ago, in a different time and place. He wondered if the same strategy of
deflection would work a second time. ‘I don't know,’ he said with
the same innocent grin that had infuriated the Scarlionis, ‘I just don't
seem to be able to help myself. There I am, just wandering along, minding my
own business, and then pop! Suddenly I'm on a different planet, or
maybe even in a different time... but enough of my problems. What are
you doing here?’

Tancredi considered the Doctor's question. ‘Very well,’ he
conceded at last, ‘I shall tell you. The knowledge will be of little use
to you as you will shortly die.’ He paced slowly to the other side of the
room and then, after further hesitation, turned back to face the Doctor. ‘I
am the last of the Jagaroth,’ he announced sternly. Any trace of humour,
irony or charm had vanished from his features. ‘I am also the saviour of
the Jagaroth.’

The Doctor gave him another of his grins. ‘Well,’ he said in a
jovial tone, ‘if you're the last of them, then there can't be all that
many about to save...’ The Doctor broke off as the full implication of
Tancredi's words finally registered. ‘Did you just say Jagaroth?’

Tancredi was surprised. ‘You've heard of us?’ he enquired.

At last the pieces seemed to fit into place. The events of the past few
hours and the alien face he had seen in the energy field of Kerensky's machine
connected themselves with what Tancredi was now telling him and distant
memories of childhood, distant memories of a cold Gallifreyan day spent with
his mentor away from the mundane daily life of the classroom. ‘Jagaroth...
yes, you all destroyed yourselves in some massive war... what...’

‘Four hundred million years is the figure you are looking for, Doctor.’

‘Is it really? How time flies,’ quipped the Doctor flippantly,
and then his voice took on a serious tone. ‘So what are you doing here?’
he asked again.

‘Surviving,’ the Captain replied bluntly. ‘The prime
motive of all species.’ The Doctor frowned, so Tancredi elaborated.
‘We were not all destroyed. A few of us escaped in a crippled
spacecraft and made planet fall on this world in its primeval time. We found it
to be uninhabitable.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes, well, four hundred million years ago it would
have been a bit of a shambles...no life to tidy it up.’

Tancredi continued with his story. ‘We tried to leave but the ship
disintegrated. I was caught in the warp field and splintered. Those splinters
of my being are now scattered through time - all identical, none complete.’
Tancredi stared at the Doctor. ‘I am not, however, satisfied with your
explanation. How do you travel though time?’

‘Well, as I said...’

Tancredi turned away in frustration at the Doctor's persistent evasiveness
and noticed the TARDIS standing unobtrusively in the corner. ‘What is
that box?’ he demanded.

‘What box?’

‘That box!’

‘Oh, that box! I don't know, I've never seen that box before
in my life... ah!’ The Doctor caught sight of a painting propped up on an
easel beside the TARDIS and, leaving his seat, darted over to investigate it.
It was a woman with no eyebrows and in his mind's eye the Doctor could see her
seated in this very room, complaining and cussing. ‘The original, I
presume?’ he smiled as he examined the brushwork. ‘Completed in
1503... it's now, what, 1505, and you're getting the old boy to knock off
another six for you, which you then brick up in a cellar in Paris for Scarlioni
to find in four hundred and seventy four years’ time - that's a very nice
piece of capital investment!’

‘Doctor, I can see that you,’ observed Tancredi in tones
identical to Scarlioni's, ‘are a dangerously clever man. I think it's
time we conducted this conversation somewhat more formally.’ He turned to
the soldier. ‘Hold him here,’ he ordered, ‘whilst I collect
the instruments of torture.’ The soldier obediently came over and held
the blade of his sword close to the Doctor's throat.

Tancredi opened the door. ‘If he wags his tongue,’ he advised
the soldier as he left, ‘confiscate it.’

The Doctor frowned. ‘How am I supposed to talk if you confiscate my
tongue?’

‘You can write, can't you?’ he heard Tancredi call.

For a few minutes they waited in silence and then the Doctor looked up at
the soldier. ‘He's mad, isn't he?’

The soldier remained impassive.

‘Must be a tough job humouring him,’ the Doctor went on.

Still the soldier said nothing.

The Doctor frowned. ‘You don't believe all that, do you?’

The soldier frowned back at him. ‘What?’

‘All that nonsense about Jagaroth spaceships...’

The soldier's reply was blunt and to the point. ‘I'm paid simply to
fight’’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes, but when you think about all that stuff...
Jagaroth spaceships and things...’

‘When you work for the Borgias,’ interjected the soldier,
‘you believe anything.’

‘The Borgias?’ hissed the Doctor. He nodded for what was not the
first time in this conversation. ‘Yes, I see your point.’

‘As I said, I'm paid simply to fight.’

‘As I said, I see your point.’ The Doctor brushed the
point of the soldier's sword away from his face. He reached into his coat and
the soldier immediately tensed. ‘No,’ the Doctor reassured him. He
held up a small Polaroid camera. ‘It's all right.’

‘Lovely!’ said the Doctor approvingly, and took his picture.
When the photograph emerged from the camera, the Doctor held it up for the
soldier to see. ‘There we are! Isn't that nice?’

The soldier frowned and came nearer. The Doctor held the snapshot out. The
soldier leaned forward to look at it. As he did so, the Doctor quickly brought
his fist up to meet with the soldier's jaw. Much as he resented resorting to
Duggan-like tactics, the Doctor was still impressed at how quickly the soldier
toppled backwards without a sound, and collapsed on the floor.

The Doctor didn't waste a moment of the time he had bought himself. He ran
over to the Mona Lisa. Six boards of canvas, all the same size as the finished
painting, sat on a stool beside it. The Polaroid camera disappeared back inside
his coat and in its place he pulled out a chunky blue felt-tip marker pen. He
dropped to one knee, placed the first canvas board on the floor, took the lid
off the pen and wrote ‘THIS IS A FAKE!’ on the clean white canvas
in large capital letters. He then pulled the second canvas off the pile and,
putting it on top of the first, again wrote ‘THIS IS A FAKE!’ in
the same large, clear writing. He worked his way through the pile until all six
boards had ‘THIS IS A FAKE!’ written on them. He replaced the pile
on the stool, putting the top board face-down so that when Tancredi returned he
would not notice that they had been defaced.

Next he took out a writing pad and tore a sheet of paper from it. He dashed
off a quick note with the felt-tip pen but formed all the letters backwards so
as to render them unintelligible. He placed the note on the table by the canvas
boards, and then snatched up a small mirror which he placed, standing on its
side, next to the letter so that it reflected the words into a readable form.

The Doctor turned to leave but before he could even contemplate entering the
TARDIS he found himself facing Captain Tancredi.

‘Just about to pop off through time again, Doctor?’ the Captain
enquired. ‘How very discourteous, especially when I had just gone to all
the trouble of fetching the thumbscrews!’

The Doctor sighed. This just didn't seem to be his millennia.

Count Scarlioni's eyes flickered open. It was dark but he could make out
that he was lying on his back. A strange creature, looking like a startled
bird, was looking him right in the eye. As his eyes regained the ability to
focus he recognised the creature.

‘Kerensky,’ he muttered.

The Professor leaned closer. ‘Yes, Count?’

Scarlioni peered into the gloom. ‘Where am I?’

‘You are in Paris, of course!’

‘Paris... perhaps it was a dream...’

Professor Kerensky had sat in stunned silence while Scarlioni had
deliriously rambled about Doctors, da Vinci and time travel. ‘Who... who
are you?’

‘I am who I am, Kerensky,’ the Count replied curtly, and
struggled to his feet with the Professor's assistance. ‘I am the one who
is paying you to work. Now get to it!’ The Count felt his forehead. He
could feel that the skin was starting to peel off. ‘Time is short.’

‘But...your face!’

Scarlioni rounded on him. ‘You pick a quarrel with my face, Kerensky?
Take care I do not pick a quarrel with yours, for I will use
instruments somewhat sharper than words.’

‘Who are the Jagaroth?’

‘So!’ the Count exclaimed. ‘It was not a dream!’ He
pointed at Professor Kerensky. ‘The Jagaroth...you serve the Jagaroth.
Now work!’

The Professor frowned at the Count's statement. ‘It... it is the
Jagaroth who need all the chickens?’ he asked, puzzled.

Scarlioni burst out laughing. ‘Chickens? It never ceases to amaze me
that such a giant intellect can live in such a tiny mind!’

The Count's laughter was abruptly stifled.

There was a voice in his head, a distant sound, calling to him from the
past. He closed his eyes and thought back four hundred million years.
Scaroth... said the voice. Scaroth...Scaroth! He opened his eyes
and stared accusingly at the terrified Professor Kerensky. But the voice
continued its chant. Scaroth...Scaroth!

‘I must think,’ the Count whispered. ‘I must have time to
think...’

‘What have you been making me work for?’ Kerensky pleaded.
‘I thought we were working to save the human race!’

‘The human race?’ The Count gave a short sharp laugh. ‘We
are working for a far greater purpose...on a scale you could not possibly
conceive.’ He looked Kerensky in the eye. ‘The fate of the Jagaroth
is in my hands. You will work for my purpose willingly...or unwillingly!’